BEST ME Journey offers a new perspective that invites each one of us to recognize the importance of accepting responsibility for our own health, fulfilment, and longevity. As more and more people awaken to this reality, it drives the dawning of a new age – a much-needed revolution in healthcare through self-care.
Currently, the medical model of the West, and much of the world, is a model based on sickness. It’s absolutely invaluable when you are acutely sick since it has its origins in the early 20th century when the greatest health issues were infection and trauma. Not so today. Today, we are dying from cancer, heart disease, and the side effects of pharmaceutical drugs themselves. Today we are struggling with an epidemic of chronic disease, which we’re attempting to treat by suppressing the symptoms, rather than resolving the deeper, underlying causes.
What’s required is a model of healthcare that has self-care at the forefront. In ancient times, people paid their doctors to keep them healthy. This is the system that is needed today, with an added focus on the key element in the equation – empowering YOU. Our healthcare systems are breaking at the seams, and a key part of the solution is to take a long-term view and reduce the future burden by proactively focusing on the prevention of sickness and issues before they manifest.
Accepting responsibility for your own well-being does not mean that you’re on your own though. In fact, ironically, in order to master self-care and optimise your well-being, you need support and guidance. At Ashiyana, we’ve created a well-being ecosystem based on expert human guidance, supported and enhanced through digital support.
Today’s explosion in chronic health issues, such as stress, anxiety, depression, obesity, diabetes, chronic fatigue, and physical pain has its roots in childhood trauma, exacerbated by poor lifestyle habits, unhealthy environments, and a virtually, non-existent healthcare system. Our vision of the future of healthcare is an integrated one, where
prevention, and natural treatment protocols are to the fore. Western, allopathic medicine can then be used primarily for accidents and emergencies where there is a need for more drastic interventions.
Type 2 Diabetes can be cured through natural medicine and lifestyle changes if the patient is prepared to accept responsibility for their own well-being, and work with a natural health professional. If not, then western medicine offers protocols that can also be employed if preferred.
Perhaps the most important change in perspective, where the paradigm really needs to shift the most, is the understanding that true well-being is not merely the absence of sickness, but rather a vibrant sense of aliveness in body, mind, and spirit. In other words, there is a continuum of wellbeing, with sickness at one end, and way over the other side of the spectrum is profound wellbeing. In between, there are various stages of less-than-optimal well-being, long before the actual manifestation of sickness. It is here that we need to give the most attention – ‘the area of vulnerability’, or potential for future sickness. Around 10 million adults in the UK are currently pre-diabetic…unknowingly! Very many more are at risk of falling into this zone. In the US the situation is even worse, where 1 in 3 or more than 110 million people are pre-diabetic!
What if employers, health services and agencies, and society as a whole, supported us in early detection, and vulnerability? That is, supported us in discovering our various health risks and imbalances, which could easily be revealed by medical symptoms questionnaires, blood tests, stool analyses, and DNA tests.
Why is it so vital to take responsibility for our own well-being?
The answer to this question is beautifully demonstrated by considering the new area of medical science known as Epigenetics. In simple terms, this says that our genes are effectively switched on or off according to our state of mind, our lifestyle habits, and our environments. In other words, our genetic blueprint is an expression of innumerable possibilities, rather than guaranteed. This being the case, if we don’t take charge, then we’re rolling the dice with our own health and inviting all manner of unpleasant outcomes. This is precisely the picture that we’re seeing in today’s world of ubiquitously present stress and chronic disease.
